[[folder:Andy]]!!Andrew "Andy" Dufresne[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TropeDufresne_1352.jpg]][[caption-width-right:350:''"You know the funny thing is, on the outside I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I HadToComeToPrisonToBeACrook."'']]->'''Played By:''' Tim Robbins

* {{Badass}}: Red lost a bet about him crying on the first day. He also manages to hold his own against the Sisters (as in, groups of them, all at once) about half the time.* BadassBookworm: In addition to being a {{Badass}}, he also spends much of his time reading and building a library.%% ** TookALevelInBadass* BatmanGambit: [[spoiler: He digs through the wall of his cell with the rock hammer he has hidden in the bible, hides the hole under the posters he brings in, gets on the warden's good side in order to keep the posters and then manages to escape, incriminating the warden without incriminating himself.]]* BookSafe: [[spoiler:The rock hammer is in the Bible.]]* TheChessmaster: Everyone else is outsmarted by him. See also BatmanGambit and GuileHero.* TheDeterminator: He keeps at trying to escape until he succeeds. He also persistently sends letters to the government until they provide funds for his library.* DeadpanSnarker: In the midst of his calm and calculating personality, he gets more than a few snarks in. For example, when discovering a maggot in his food, Brooks asks him if he's going to eat it. His response is a deadpan, "No, I did not plan on it."* DownTheDrain: He escapes through a sewer pipe.* GuileHero: He manages to escape by outsmarting everyone, including the warden Norton.* HadToComeToPrisonToBeACrook: TropeNamer. He was "for-real innocent" when he was arrested, but becomes an accomplice in money laundering while in prison.* HeterosexualLifePartners: He and Red quickly become the best of friends, to the point Red follows him to Mexico.* IncriminatingIndifference: Though he was really doing this because he was actually innocent.* TheMentor: He helped Tommy to pass his GED with a C+ average.* PerpetualTourist: He ends up in the Pacific coast of Mexico at the end of the movie.* TheQuietOne: He's marked by seldom saying a word, and by staying completely quiet on the first night.* TheSmartGuy: And a handy EvilGenius for Norton.* TheStoic: Barely shows any emotion despite having one of the best excuses to be unhappy.** NotSoStoic: [[spoiler: Until he loses his chance to go free legitimately.]]* WronglyAccused: He really ''didn't'' kill his wife and her lover, but still did 19 years of a life sentence for doing so.[[/folder]]

* TheAtoner: The only one in Shawshank willing to own up to his guilt, he spends 40 years in prison making up for his crime.* BlackBestFriend: Morgan Freeman plays the best friend to Andy.* BrutalHonesty: When he tells the parole officers exactly what he thinks about himself and them, the honesty is enough to let him out of prison.* CaptivityHarmonica: He is given a harmonica as a gift from Andy, but doesn't play it because it reminds him of his free days where he would play the harmonica.* CoolOldGuy: He's been in prison almost as long as Andy has been alive, and uses this experience to help him out.* DeadpanSnarker: Particularly in the narration, he always has a quip ready for every situation.* FirstPersonPeripheralNarrator: He narrates the story while Andy is the main character.* HeterosexualLifePartners: He ends up good enough friends with Andy that he follows him to Mexico.* HopeIsScary: ''"Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane."''* FriendInTheBlackMarket: Red's main role in prison is to help smuggle things in on request for the other inmates.* NiceHat: His black and gray knit cap.* OceanAwe: At the end, he remarks on how blue the Pacific is in his dream.* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: No one calls him Ellis, just Red.* TheOldConvict: A lifer who knows the ropes at Maine's Shawshank State Prison.* RaceLift: A RedheadedHero Irishman in the novel, which gets a reference in the film.* SupportingProtagonist: Second protagonist to Andy.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Brooks]]!!Brooks Hatlen->'''Played By:''' James Whitmore

* CoolOldGuy: One of the popular inmates, he's nice and educated. Red points out this is why he doesn't want to leave prison.* DrivenToSuicide: After being released for parole and not knowing what to do next, he hangs himself.* GoodbyeCruelWorld: He writes a suicide note to his friends in jail.* NiceGuy: He's very nice to the younger convicts, to the point that when he tries to kill Heywood, most of the others know he won't go through with it.* TheOldConvict: When he's finally paroled, he has been in prison for 50 years.* PetTheDog: Taking care of Jake, the baby raven. This is combined with BaitAndSwitch when he requests the grub Andy found in his meal.* StrangerInAFamiliarLand: Seeing the outside world moving too fast and not being able to provide useful work because of it causes his DrivenToSuicide.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Heywood]]!!Heywood->'''Played By:''' Creator/WilliamSadler

* BookDumb: His lack of knowledge in literature makes for a hilarious scene in which he misnames several books and authors.* DeadpanSnarker: Not to the same extent as Red, but he does have his moments as well, particularly in the early scene when he's picking on Fat Ass.%% * HotBlooded* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: The first clue we get that he isn’t the sadist he appears to be is when he quietly begs for 'Fatass' to stop crying, knowing full well that Hadley will beat him for it. He's noticeably upset the next morning upon finding the man died of his injuries.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tommy]]!!Tommy Williams->'''Played By:''' Gil Bellows

* BookDumb: He needs lots of help with passing his GED, but is also willing to learn.* HeKnowsTooMuch: Killed to make sure Andy isn't released.* HiddenDepths: Red describes him as "finding Brains he never knew he had".* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Cocky and boisterous at first but he reveals that he genuinely wants to change.* ManicPixieDreamGirl: A male example for Andy.* MoralityPet: to Andy, not that he needed one.* NeverLearnedToRead: Before helping him with his GED, Andy walks him through how to read.* SurprisinglySuddenDeath: He is abruptly killed by Norton and Hadley.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Bogs]]!!Bogs Diamond->'''Played By:''' Creator/MarkRolston

* DepravedBisexual: He doesn't care who he has sex with as long as he does it by force.* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: Both an aggressor and a victim of one. See LaserGuidedKarma.* LaserGuidedKarma: After attacking and raping Andy for two years, he beats Andy within an inch of his life. Then after a week in the hole, he gets beaten within an inch of his life by Hadley, permanently losing the ability to walk. He is then taken to the hospital where he lives the rest of his days eating all his food through a straw. It's a KickTheSonOfABitch moment: as the guards beat him with nightsticks (hard enough that they're clearly breaking bones) he desperately tries to crawl/claw away on the floor, crying and begging for mercy (echoing his own previous victims). No one sheds a tear for him.* PrisonRape: His gang's favorite hobby is to rape weaker inmates.* SissyVillain: His gang is called "The Sisters." Also, see PrisonRape.** Also, he cries and screams as he tries to get away from Hadley before [[ExtremeMeleeRevenge he gets his shit ruined.]]* SmugSnake: He thinks he can get away with everything. [[LaserGuidedKarma Unfortunately for him, he is wrong.]][[/folder]]

[[folder:Blatch]]!!Elmo Blatch->'''Played By:''' Bill Bolender

* {{Jerkass}}: Killed two people for no reason and then was really happy someone else could conveniently take the fall.* KarmaHoudini: He ended up in prison for a lesser crime than murder and with a relatively short sentence (6-12 years). Meanwhile, another person is in prison for ''life'' and serves ''19'' years for the crime he committed.* MotorMouth: He confesses in his cell so quickly he seems excited about it.* SmugSmiler: He gives a big toothy grin about how he got away with murder.* SmugSnake: He talks freely about the crime he got away with committing in his prison cell.[[/folder]]

* BigBad: His money laundering scheme blossoms into murder and deliberate wrongful imprisonment when it's revealed his accomplice was innocent. * BitchInSheepsClothing: He seems like a straight-and-narrow guy with rigid by-the-book philosophy. Only later is it revealed he's actually a ruthless {{Hypocrite}}.* CaptainSmoothAndSergeantRough: He’s the smooth to Hadley’s rough.* ChurchgoingVillain: He loves God and the Bible... too bad he's still evil.%% * CompositeCharacter* DirtyCoward: He is willing to murder someone, and deliberately keep someone else in prison for a crime he didn't commit, in order to protect himself from being arrested for money laundering.* DrivenToSuicide: Rather than allow the police to arrest him, he shoots himself in the head.* FauxAffablyEvil: His politeness at the beginning carries an entirely different tone upon viewing his heinous acts.* FourEyesZeroSoul: This bespectacled man is pure evil.* {{Hypocrite}}: He claims to love the Bible but he does some thoroughly un-Christian things (killing people, punishing people for crimes he knows they didn't commit, and pilfering money).* LaserGuidedKarma: After committing heinous acts for the better part of the movie, he is about to get arrested by the police for everything he did while the man he kept imprisoned wrongly runs free. Surrounded, he opts to shoot himself instead. Made better by the fact that his own favorite bible passage is about judgment.* NonActionBigBad: Norton has his authority to enforce his threats and attack dogs like Hadley to back him up. He doesn't need to get his own hands dirty.* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Seems like this at first. The more the movie goes on, the harder this trope gets averted.* StealingFromTheTill: His money laundering is why he can't allow Andy to be freed. Andy even notes he's gotten kickbacks on his kickbacks.* TantrumThrowing: At the end, during his VillainousBreakdown, he throws a tantrum about a conspiracy.* VillainousBreakdown: In the end, see TantrumThrowing above.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hadley]]!!Capt. Byron T. Hadley[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TropeHadley_9396.jpg]][[caption-width-right:350:''"You eat when we say you eat. You shit when we say you shit. You piss when we say you piss. You got that, you maggot dick motherfucker?"'']]->'''Played By:''' Creator/ClancyBrown

* {{Catchphrase}}: ''"On your feet!"''* CaptainSmoothAndSergeantRough: He’s the rough to Norton’s smooth.* CharacterTic: Hadley has a tendency to take off his hat before he begins beating on someone.* CompositeCharacter: Of several different guards in the original novella.* DirtyCop: Engages in ruthless tactics like beatings (see NoHoldsBarredBeatdown) for crimes as minor as ''crying.''* TheDragon: To Norton. While Norton was the one who planned killing Tommy, it was Hadley who carried it out.* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: He has a wife and kids. Averted with his brother, who he doesn't care about remotely and doesn't mourn his passing due to an apparent estrangement.* EvilSoundsDeep: Has a lower and deeper voice than most characters.* FloweryInsults: Hadley seemingly thinks of insults in his spare time.* HairTriggerTemper: Anything and everything pisses off Hadley; he's in a perpetually foul mood and reacts violently to whatever the inmates do.* InelegantBlubbering: [[spoiler:The narration reveals that Hadley cried like a little girl when the authorities came to arrest him for his crimes.]]* {{Jerkass}}: He's about as pleasant as you'd expect a short-tempered, needlessly violent corrupt sadist to be.* LaserGuidedKarma: [[spoiler:It's deeply satisfying to know that he cried like a little girl while being arrested, especially since years earlier he'd beaten an inmate to death for crying.]]* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: He doles these out like he's Santa Claus and everyone asked for internal bleeding for Christmas.* PetTheDog: He beats up Andy's rapist to the point that the man is permanently disabled; presumably this is because Andy gave him financial advice. He was also kind enough to point out Andy to fellow guard Dekins, who needed financial advice.* PoliceBrutality: NoHoldsBarredBeatdown is his specialty.* PsychoForHire: He shows no sympathy for any of the inmates, which may be why Norton wanted him so much.* SirSwearsALot: He's likely to say multiple curse words in a single sentence.* ThisIsGonnaSuck: When he’s arrested, he knows just how awful it's going to be.[[/folder]]